wilderness LECTURES

Pole of Cold: a journey to chase winter

Felicity Aston on 13/12/2017 19:30

Felicity Aston MBE is a living legend in the world of the cold... She is the first and only woman in the world to ski across Antarctica alone. The 1744km, 59-day journey completed in January 2012 also made her the first person in the world to traverse the continent purely by muscle power without the aid of kites or machines. In 2015 she was awarded the Queen’s Polar Medal for services in Antarctica - making her one of very few women ever to be given the honour – and was appointed MBE for services to Polar Exploration. In 2009 she led the 38-day, 911km Kaspersky Lab Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition, the largest and most international women’s team ever to ski to the South Pole. She led the first British women’s crossing of Greenland, was also part of the first, ever, all-female team to complete the Polar Challenge, a 500km endurance race to the magnetic north pole, and she led a 35,000km expedition in a Land Rover Defender to the Pole of Cold (the coldest inhabited place in the world) in the far northeast of Siberia.

Most importantly, Felicity was our Award winner in 2008 for her 700km journey across Lake Baikal on the ice.

'What does winter mean to you?' This was the question that Felicity and her team sought to answer as they travelled more than 35,000km from the UK across Scandinavia and Siberia in a Land Rover Defender. Using images, stories, film footage and sounds gathered during the expedition, Felicity describes the people and places the team experienced as they headed into some of the most extreme winter climates in the world including the Pole of Cold, the coldest inhabited place on the planet where temperatures plummeted to almost -60C. What is the best form of transport when it is so cold that fuel becomes solid? How cold does it have to be before children stop going to school? And is it possible to hear your own breath freeze....?